Daylight Hours in Arizona
Arizona does not move its clocks, so while the rest of the country jumps an hour every March, Phoenix simply keeps Mountain Standard Time and spends the summer sharing a clock with California instead of with Denver.
Phoenix is losing about 14 minutes of daylight a weekToday in Phoenix, and today where you are
Mountain Standard Time year round time, 33.5 degrees northEvery figure on this page is computed for Phoenix, the largest city in Arizona at the 2020 census. That is a real answer for a lot of the state and the wrong answer for the rest of it, so the box below gives you your own.
Today in Phoenix
October 19
- Civil twilight begins6:11 AM
- Sunrise6:36 AM
- Solar noon12:13 PM
- Sunset5:50 PM
- Civil twilight ends6:15 PM
- Daylight11h 14m
Reading the U.S. Naval Observatory for this point. The times above are this site’s own calculation until it answers.
These times assume a flat, unobstructed horizon. USNO puts it this way: “Sunrise and sunset conventionally refer to the times when the upper edge of the disk of the Sun is on the horizon, considered unobstructed relative to the location of interest.” A ridge, a hill or a building to your west will end your afternoon earlier than any published time, sometimes by twenty minutes or more, and no sunset table anywhere can tell you by how much.
Check this point and date at U.S. Naval Observatory Astronomical Applications Department
Arizona’s daylight year
- Longest day14h 22mJune 21
- Shortest day9h 57mDecember 21
- Difference across the year4h 25mset by Phoenix's latitude of 33.5 degrees north
- Earliest sunset5:20 PMDecember 4, not the shortest day
- Sun against the clock28 min latePhoenix sits 7 degrees west of the Mountain Standard Time year round time meridian
- Longest day June 21
- Shortest day December 21
- Earliest sunset December 4
- Latest sunrise January 8
Phoenix runs from 14h 22m of daylight on June 21 down to 9h 57m on December 21, a difference of 4h 25m across the year. That single number is almost entirely a latitude fact, and it puts Arizona 44th of the fifty states for how much its day length moves.
The curve above is drawn from a real day by day calculation rather than from a smooth wave, which is why the two most useful marks on it are not where people expect. The earliest sunset falls on December 4, roughly two weeks before the shortest day, and the latest sunrise on January 8, roughly two weeks after it. Solar noon drifts later through the winter, which drags the whole day later against the clock while the day itself is still shortening. The evening end loses that race first and wins it back first, so the afternoons start drawing out well before the solstice while the mornings keep getting darker.
Arizona daylight milestones in 2026
Next up in Phoenix: Earliest sunset on December 4.
- January 8
Latest sunrise
Sunrise 7:33 AM · Sunset 5:37 PM · 10h 04m of daylight
In the new year, not in December, and for the mirror image of the reason the earliest sunset came early.
- March 17
Days pass twelve hours
Sunrise 6:36 AM · Sunset 6:38 PM · 12h 02m of daylight
A few days before the spring equinox rather than on it, because sunrise and sunset are measured at the sun's upper edge and the atmosphere bends the light.
- April 17
First 7 PM sunset
Sunrise 5:55 AM · Sunset 7:01 PM · 13h 06m of daylight
The evening most people actually notice, and the reason the clock change lands when it does.
- June 21
Longest day
Sunrise 5:19 AM · Sunset 7:41 PM · 14h 22m of daylight
The June solstice. The sun stands at its highest and the year turns around.
- August 26
Last 7 PM sunset
Sunrise 5:58 AM · Sunset 7:01 PM · 13h 03m of daylight
The end of the long evenings, usually weeks before anyone starts mentioning it.
- September 26
Days fall under twelve hours
Sunrise 6:19 AM · Sunset 6:19 PM · 12h 00m of daylight
A few days after the September equinox, for the same reason the spring crossing came early.
- December 4
Earliest sunset
Sunrise 7:17 AM · Sunset 5:20 PM · 10h 03m of daylight
Not the shortest day. It arrives about two weeks early, because solar noon is still drifting later at the same time the day is still shortening.
- December 21
Shortest day
Sunrise 7:28 AM · Sunset 5:25 PM · 9h 57m of daylight
The December solstice, and the only milestone here that is about the length of the day rather than the position of one end of it.
What does not happen in Arizona
Arizona does not observe daylight saving time, so its clocks never change and the two biggest jumps in the daylight year simply do not happen here.
The sun never sets before 5 PM in Phoenix, which is why winter afternoons here keep their shape.
Arizona and its time zone
A time zone is an hour of real solar time wide, so two places on the same clock can be nearly an hour apart in what the sun is actually doing. Phoenix sits 7 degrees west of the meridian Mountain Standard Time year round time is built around, which puts solar noon about 28 minutes after clock noon and shifts every sunrise and sunset in Arizona later than the same latitude would give on the eastern side of the zone. Arizona does not move its clocks at all, so this offset is the whole story here and it is the same in July as in January.
On the longest day of 2026, the sun sets about 23 minutes later at Arizona’s western edge than at its eastern one, on the same clock, because the state is about 5.8 degrees of longitude wide. North to south the difference is one of length rather than clock time, worth about 31 minutes of daylight across the state’s 5.7 degrees of latitude.
Both of those figures are the spread across Arizona, not an error bar on Phoenix. For an exact answer at an exact place, the ZIP box near the top of this page takes any US ZIP code.
Arizona keeps more than one clock
Arizona stays on Mountain Standard Time all year. The Navajo Nation, which covers much of Apache and Navajo counties and part of Coconino County, does observe daylight saving time, while the Hopi Reservation inside it does not.
The boundary runs through Apache, Navajo, Coconino counties rather than around them. Two addresses a few miles apart there can keep different clocks, so the ZIP tool above names the county it used and says when the county itself is divided.
U.S. Naval Observatory, Rise, Set, and Twilight Definitions“Civil twilight begins in the morning, and ends in the evening, when the center of the Sun is geometrically 6 degrees below the horizon. This is the limit at which twilight illumination is sufficient, under good weather conditions, for terrestrial objects to be clearly distinguished.”
Civil twilight is the reason a sunset time is not the same as the end of the day. In Phoenix on the longest day of the year the sun sets at 7:41 PM and civil twilight runs on until 8:10 PM, another 29 minutes of usable light. On the shortest day the same gap is only 28 minutes, because the sun is dropping toward the horizon at a steeper angle in winter than in summer.
The states with the biggest daylight years
| State | Reference city | Longest | Shortest | Change across the year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska | Anchorage | 19h 23m | 5h 27m | 13h 56m |
| Washington | Seattle | 15h 59m | 8h 25m | 7h 34m |
| North Dakota | Fargo | 15h 52m | 8h 31m | 7h 21m |
| Montana | Billings | 15h 44m | 8h 40m | 7h 04m |
| Oregon | Portland | 15h 41m | 8h 42m | 6h 59m |
| Minnesota | Minneapolis | 15h 37m | 8h 46m | 6h 51m |
| Vermont | Burlington | 15h 33m | 8h 50m | 6h 43m |
| Idaho | Boise | 15h 27m | 8h 56m | 6h 31m |
| Maine | Portland | 15h 26m | 8h 56m | 6h 30m |
| South Dakota | Sioux Falls | 15h 26m | 8h 56m | 6h 30m |
| Wisconsin | Milwaukee | 15h 23m | 9h 00m | 6h 23m |
| New Hampshire | Manchester | 15h 22m | 9h 00m | 6h 22m |
Ranked by how much each state’s day length changes between its longest and shortest day, at the state’s largest city. Arizona is 44 of 50 on that measure.
Arizona daylight FAQ
The rest of the Arizona sky
Daylight hours in nearby states
Every time on this page is computed from the published NOAA solar position equations and reconciled against the U.S. Naval Observatory, which is the reference this site defers to: across 343 USNO days at stations from Miami to Utqiagvik, every sunrise, sunset and civil twilight time agrees to within one minute and most agree exactly. Time zone boundaries and the daylight saving dates are statutory, from 49 CFR part 71 and 15 U.S.C. 260a. Daylight hours by state.